


Dresser (prompt #3)

by pinebluffvariant



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-19 14:47:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4750244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinebluffvariant/pseuds/pinebluffvariant





	Dresser (prompt #3)

Scully flew to Raleigh.

It was a quick flight from National in a small Embraer, two seats per side per row. She booked both A and B and flashed her badge when the question ‘why’ she needed both inevitably came. She sat by the window, struggling to get comfortable. On the aisle seat, she put a granola bar for her blood sugar, a bottle of water for hydration, and Mulder’s garment bag for him.

She’d taken great care in selecting his outfit, down to the details: she had carefully searched his surprisingly sturdy thrift store dresser and folded his best dress socks, underwear, and tie into a silk pouch. You shouldn’t get silk wet, so she didn’t cry. She held her breath the whole time.

His lips were whispering to her from the hull of the plane. She could feel him below her, over the noise of the engine, pleading with her to be heard. It was profoundly unfair that he wasn’t allowed up here in the cabin with the living.

***

Skinner had driven down for the funeral, and so he gave her a ride back home, up the monotony of I-95. Virginia in its wan winter pallor passed before her. Scully’s fingers were numb from the cold and her tongue from not being able to glance over and say “Hey, Mulder, penny for your thoughts.“ Skinner didn’t object when she’d asked to be taken to Hegal Place.

The rooms were moody and silent in the dusk of the evening. She’d needed to get out of there quickly to make her flight, two days before. The dresser was still open, a couple of t-shirts resting on top of a file folder next to the table lamp perched on the wood. It was a scene of domesticity, hastily dressing for work because you’d started drinking coffee and eating muffins in bed on a Thursday morning. Because you’d gotten distracted by someone’s body, so different from yours, but so yours, in the shower.

She and Mulder had built those towers of furniture together, after all, of books and papers and clothing and watches, intimately enmeshed in the quiet chaos of their insatiable love. Her ass slid around on the wood and his knees and her heels beat a tattoo into the drawers in the morning light. All atop his dresser in front of the window.

Scully stood in his bedroom, still smelling him. She tugged her shoes off her swollen feet, unzipped her too-tight skirt, rolled her silky stockings down her legs, calves chunkier than ever. The dug-in bra elastic stung her skin as she undid the clasp, harsh and lonely. She turned to the closet, closed her eyes when she opened the door. She couldn’t look at the row of suits hanging there, the most ordered part of him, and she fumbled for the old red-and-blue bathrobe on a hook inside the door.

She sat lotus style on top of the dresser, surrounded by the objects that had seemed so trivial once, and stared out the window for a long, long time.


End file.
